


From a Cloudless Sky

by Artifiction



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, F/M, Fist Fights, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, shipping only implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:21:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28119846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artifiction/pseuds/Artifiction
Summary: We know Clint was in New Mexico when Thor went to take his hammer back. What if Natasha had been there, too?
Relationships: Natasha Romanov/Thor
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	From a Cloudless Sky

Natasha Romanoff had taken some nasty hits in her time. Not often, of course — the whole point of fighting the way she did was to _avoid_ getting hit, to flow like water around blows and into every gap in their defense, to turn their mass and momentum against them. It was a microcosm of spycraft.

She’d never been hit like this. The blond behemoth of a man had put her through the wall of the facility with enough force that when she struck the muddy ground outside, she _bounced_ before she skidded, and was briefly left to ponder the benefits of a New Mexico crater-mud mask while rain pounded down from above.

Then, she got back up, pushing off the crumpled form of the SHIELD agent who had made an even more rapid exodus through the wall a moment before she had. _Crash mat_ **_and_ ** _springboard. Even SHIELD agents have to work two jobs to make ends meet_. The thought put a grim smile on her lips as she surged out of the rain, through the freshly torn gap in the wall of the temporary tube-like hallway, and swept the legs out from under him.

Tried to, rather. It was like running into a mountain. He took a step forward, catching his balance, and pivoted towards her. To her surprise, he was grinning.

“Ah! The fire-haired lady returns.”

Even with her reaction speed, his fist passed so close to her left cheek, she swore she felt fine blond hairs tickling her skin. Compensating, she dodged the next one faster, and surged up, coming inside his guard with a knee to his solar plexus. He _caught_ it, open-palm, as if she hadn’t put enough power behind it to crack ribs, and surged forward.

It was a credit to her training and the excellent tread on her boots that instead of unceremoniously skidding across the floor, she managed to turn the momentum into a back handspring, and come up in a crouch.

The man had the temerity to _beam_ at her, a smile as bright as a spotlight. "Nicely done! Ordinarily, it would be a pleasure to spar with you, but I have other business! Another time." With what she was almost certain was a _bow_ , he turned, and sprinted down the hall towards the center of the crater.

Natasha hit him on the ladder to the next level down, driving both feet into his back. The fall was ten feet straight down and the landing was onto a steel-grated catwalk. He had nothing to cushion him. She had him. The two of them struck with a bone-jarring reverberation. Natasha had dropped men onto catwalks like this before. Even without her weight on their backs, it was usually enough to take them out of a fight and leave them with scars on their faces like they’d been cuddling with a waffle iron. Just in case, though, she went for her garotte.

This сукин сын came up like a goddamn jackrabbit, slamming her back into the ladder. She got the loop over his head, yanking back with frantic strength. With flexibility she’d _never_ seen in a man his size, he arched back, seized her by the shoulders… and _tossed_ her like a sack of potatoes over the edge of the catwalk.

She had a full second to think _I wasn’t even supposed to fucking be in New Mexico today_ before she hit the muddy ground and the world went black.

* * *

She was still nursing a headache-she-hoped-was-not-a-concussion while trying to scrub mud out of her gear when Agent Coulson stepped into the trailer she was sharing with Clint. Natasha barely kept a scowl off her lips. She knew what was coming. There was nothing men who she’d shown up in the past loved seeing more than the rare occasions that she lost, as if it was proof she wasn’t as good as her reputation. The art of choosing the right barb to retort with was key. _Still better than you on your best day_ , maybe?

“I need your help.” His voice was as plain as the rest of him, but _that_ was not what she’d expected him to lead with.

Natasha paused, dropping the wad of muddy paper towels she was holding, and half-turned towards him.

“The guy’s not talking, and Sitwell is on my ass about how he breezed through our best guys like they were mall cops.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m impressed you’re still upright. You went three rounds with him. Next-best performance went two, and is still out like a light.”

Alright, so sometimes the barb wasn’t required. She pursed her lips. “And what exactly were you hoping I’d do to him that you can’t?”

The bland man offered a faint smile. “You’re the expert interrogator. I just need to know where he’s from, who he’s working for, and how they know about the artifact. We kept this out of the news on purpose, so someone must have been watching for it.”

She sighed, and glanced at her gear. _It’ll be easier to clean when the mud dries, anyways_. “I’ll see what I can do.”

* * *

Natasha Romanoff was _very_ good at reading people. From watching the way someone walked down the street, she could tell you if they were carrying a concealed weapon, what style of martial arts they favored, and, more often than not, their nationality. From watching the way they _fought_ , she could tell you a whole lot more. The first thing she did when she got to the ad-hoc cell was watch the video of the interrogation with Coulson. That should have combined with her observations from their fight to give her a good sense of him… and instead, it just left her more baffled. The man’s body language was just _wrong_.

She watched him sitting, knees wide, shoulders straight, zip-tie-cuffed wrists resting between them, fingers not quite together. It wasn’t right for a defensive posture, wasn’t right for a defiant one. His silence was at odds with the way his eyes moved, the way his shoulders were canted was detached from the way he held his torso. It was like an abstract painting, where each feature seemed to remind you of something, but none of it came together into a real image.

It all made her headache worse. She watched the interrogation a second time, then glanced at the tech who was waiting for her to surrender the surveillance chair back. The tech was young, short-cropped curly hair, cookie-cutter uniform, and with unusually innocent eyes. Natasha jerked her thumb at the door. “Go take your lunch break.”

Despite knowing she outranked them, the tech hesitated. Natasha scowled. “Go. Trust me, I’m doing you a favor. This isn’t the sort of thing you want to watch.”

The tech blinked, then got it, and rose rapidly, hurrying out of the room. Natasha exhaled, and then, with a few quick actions on the keyboard, turned off the interior cameras. She hated when amateurs watched her work.

* * *

She entered, and took the opportunity to study him more closely. Some enterprising SHIELD agent had hosed him off, evidently to clean off the mud for facial recognition scans — which had picked up a complete blank. His dark shirt and jeans clung to him like a second skin, emphasizing muscles on muscles, and his long blond hair was tossed back and tousled. The room was chilly. He should have been shivering. Instead, he simply sat, looking like an underwear model chiseled out of white granite and gold.

As someone who made it her business to look good even, or especially, when being interrogated, it was rather disconcerting to meet a man who did the same. She almost hoped he was doing it on purpose, even though it would make her job harder. If he was doing it unconsciously, that was just not fair.

His eyebrows rose when he saw her, but he said nothing. The earlier exuberance was gone. The smile was gone. That was expected, for a cocky bastard who’d gotten caught. He looked like some colossal weight had settled on him. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that his expression had nothing to do with being caught by SHIELD, and everything to do with the bizarre interaction Clint in his perch had watched him have with the artifact in the crater, after wading through a half-dozen more goons after her to get to it.

 _“He walked up to it, delighted and grinning, like he was seeing an old friend. This wasn’t an objective-achieved smirk, Nat, or a post-adrenaline-high smile. He grabs it by the handle, tries to lift it as if he expects it to just pop out of the stone, then tries with both hands, and then… it’s like some guy kicked him in the nuts, killed his puppy, and told him he was sleeping with his wife. Dude looks up at the sky and_ **_howls_** _, then drops to his knees. I almost felt bad tranquing him, and even then it took three shots before he keeled over.”_

Natasha remembered, very clearly, the time Clint had taken out a charging rhinoceros with two shots that time in Budapest. _I guess my body language would be off after three of them too._ For instance, she’d be unconscious for 36 hours.

“Seems like you didn’t have anything to say to Coulson.”

Eyes the blue-grey of a summer storm watched her, silently. Thinking back, she tried to place his accent. It was _almost_ British, and she had worked on accents enough that she should have been able to tell what the base accent was… hut she had nothing. _I guess getting ragdolled around by a Scandinavian mountain poured into human form has a negative impact on recall._ It must have also had a negative impact on sanity, given the next thing that came out of her mouth.

“Now that your business is taken care of, is that offer to spar still up?”

That startled him, and he smiled. _It’s a good way to let his guard down. And I can pay attention to his fighting style and see what I can figure out._ As a post-facto excuse, it was a little weak, but it might pass for Fury, if the blond used her to put a new door in the wall again and the Director ended up asking what the hell she’d been thinking.

He rose to his feet from the chair, and absentmindedly spread his hands apart, as if to stretch. The zip tie cuffs broke with a _snap_ of overstrained plastic, and a shiver of premonition went through her. She’d broken out of zip tie cuffs before — the trick was using momentum and the leverage of your torso to break the relatively fragile tongue out of the locking mechanism. He’d done it by flexing his shoulders. She imagined her clavicle wouldn’t be much more of a challenge.

 _Nat, why are you doing this, really?_ The question lingered as both of them limbered up and stretched. The answer came as she lead with a vicious Muay Thai shin-kick towards his hip that he took with a grunt and a slight shift of weight. _Because the math on this guy doesn’t add up, and I hate unbalanced equations._ She faded back, her shin throbbing from where it had made contact with him. With the casual confidence of a man with _very_ good spatial awareness, he reached back, grabbed the chair, and threw at her in a single smooth motion.

She rolled under it, mind working. Him being willing to casually involve a prop scratched two of her theories, unless he was actually trying to kill her, in which case one was still in play. _Fourteen or fifteen left to go_. She feinted to the side, as if planning to prepare for a mirror of her first kick. He settled weight into that side, bracing instinctively, and simultaneously, tensed his forearm, shifting it slightly forward. Both were unconscious responses. The weight made sense. The forearm one was _weird_. She went low, flowing out the feint, and swept his other leg. He toppled, a hundred kilos of muscle falling, and _rolled_ back, surging up mid-roll to land on his feet with all the liquid grace of a dancer. Her eyes narrowed. _Twelve._

It was his turn to close distance, and he did so with shocking speed for his size. His hand came down at her, a strange overhead swing, like an axe-chop. _Or… a hammer blow_. The artifact appeared in her mind as she sidestepped the swing, grabbed his wrist, and tugged, experimentally. Indeed, he had more momentum behind it than he should have for a fist-blow, even an unorthodox one. She was gratified to watch him stumble, grabbed his shoulders, and surged up, twisting to wrap her legs around his head. _Clean thoughts, Romanoff_. Her ankles locked together, her thighs squeezed. He wrapped an arm around her locked ankles, pulling them towards his chest, and unceremoniously dropped onto his back, the rotation of the motion guaranteeing her a head-first meeting with the floor. _Seven._

By some miracle, she managed to twist out of his grip on her legs, and pivoted _around_ him mid-fall, unhooking her legs. This time, he hit the ground with the overwhelming crash a man of his size _should_. She only barely got her knees out of the way, ending in a straddle on his chest. _Clean thoughts, clean thoughts._ The way he grinned up at her didn’t help with that. He looked entirely too comfortable there between her thighs. _It’s a dangerous place to be. Let me show you why_.

She jammed her knees up into his underarms, and flickered a blow to his face. He raised a hand to deflect, and she transitioned into a simple armbar, throwing both arms and her whole weight onto his left forearm. She liked joint locks. Joint locks were a matter of leverage, a great equalizer against bigger opponents There were lots of people whose arms were stronger than her arms. The list of people with arms stronger than _all_ her weight and hard-earned muscle was much shorter.

The blond added himself to the list. As all her weight came down on his arm, his biceps flexed, then held. She growled, shoving her knee harder into his left armpit. The brachial plexus, where the ulnar, median, and radial nerve passed on their way from the spine to the arm, was a universal human weakness. Pressure on it, properly applied, was excruciating, and she _always_ applied pressure properly.

Slowly, his arm flexed, pushing her back, smile never fading. He didn’t even flinch. _Oh. well. That narrows it down to just one, then._ The thought, and its chain of conclusions, was enough to distract her from keeping proper control of the high mount. He _surged_ up, forcing her back, and a moment later, somehow managed to rise to his feet. For a moment, she tried to keep the straddle, but she’d gotten what she came for, and there was no reason to collect more bruises. She dropped away, rolling back as she landed, and ending up by the chair in a crouch.

Acting out of breath was much easier when you _were_. Panting, she raised a hand, bracing herself on her knees. “That’s enough for me, thanks. I yield.”

His smile didn’t waver, and he offered her another slight bow. “The pleasure was mine, my lady.” He reached out. She righted the chair, and slid it across the floor to him. He settled in it. With the fight over, the temporary rush of joy that had filled him and animated him seemed to fade, and he settled back into the posture she’d found him in. Natasha considered asking another question, then changed her mind. She had Coulson’s answers.

* * *

When she let herself out of the interrogation room, she found him waiting. With him was the tech, looking supremely nervous, and rather overawed. Coulson just smiled at her, looking as bland as ever. “You know, when Klein here came looking for me because he was worried a SHIELD agent was about to use enhanced interrogation techniques on a prisoner, I wasn’t expecting to see you getting into a fist fight. Is it part of your usual training to take the handcuffs off of dangerous prisoners, Agent Romanov?”

She didn’t deign to respond to the bait with a glare. “He took them off himself, actually. You wanted my expertise in interrogation, you got it.”

His smile grew a touch blander. “Is that so?”

For a moment, she considered waiting until the tech was gone, but her headache was starting to throb. “He’s not from around here.”

Coulson blinked. “I knew that much, Agent Romanoff. I need to know where he _is_ from. Chechnya? Pakistan?”

She shook her head. “You’re not listening. He’s not from around… _here_.” She sketched a circle in the air with one finger.

To his credit, Coulson got it. and she saw him doing the same calculus on the implications of _that_. The tech-named-Klien just looked confused. “And he knows about the artifact because it’s his. I think it’s a weapon. A hammer.”

Coulson stared at her for a long time. Her head pounded in a steady rhythm as she waited.

“How sure are you of this, Agent Romanoff?”

She spared a glance at the tech, and shrugged. “Positive. I’m going to go get an advil. Have fun figuring out the jurisdiction on that, Agent Coulson.”

As she made her way back to the trailer, the singular upside of the whole situation occurred to her, and put a smile on her lips. Clint was going to be tickled pink to learn that he was the first person on earth to bag an alien with a bow and arrow.

**Author's Note:**

> I briefly considered naming this "A Peal Of Thunder". I'll save that for the smutty version of this.


End file.
